The present invention relates generally to the field of sheet processing systems and methods, and more particularly, to systems and methods for aligning and organizing sheets, such as paper statements, inserts, financial documents, and the like.
Financial institutions, long distance telephone companies, and a number of other organizations frequently send paperwork to existing or potential customers. For example, a credit card customer may receive monthly statements, informational inserts, sheets of convenience checks, and the like. In some circumstances, the paperwork accompanies a card, such as a credit card or the like, mounted in or to a card carrier. In order to send the paperwork and/or card to a customer, the information may be sent first to a third party organization for processing and mailing. One such organization is First Data Merchant Services Corporation (FDMS).
Mail processing systems are currently used to mail, for example, a sheet of convenience checks to a customer. Current systems typically will print the checks on an individual sheet of paper, stack large numbers of sheets in a bin, individually retrieve each sheet, and then process the sheet for eventual delivery to the customer. The high volume of mailings, however, can make this an expensive process. Moreover, current systems may be incapable of processing different batches of sheets, where the location of bar codes on the sheets vary from one batch to another.
The present invention relates to machines and techniques that address at least some of the problems of the current processing equipment. For example, the present invention provides machines and techniques that may be used to process such media in a more cost efficient manner.